Innovation + Responsibility

Today Sun took a big step forward (if I do say so myself) and published a mid-year update to our most recent CSR report. As any reader of this blog knows, my favorite topic these days is CSR reporting and my mission to answer the questions of why, how, when and for whom do we do it.  This mid-year update is motivated by a desire to increase our transparency as well as by a desire to help us get some answers to these questions.  How does this help us answer the "why, how, when and who" of reporting?

* First of all, it helps remind us that a primary reason we report is to be held accountable. More transparency enables better accountability, both internally and externally.

* This mid-year update also gives us an opportunity to consider going outside the "traditional" reporting framework that prevails among companies today, namely the annual CSR report that comes out three to six months after all the relevant data has been collected. It's kind of an experiment, I suppose.

* By updating outside the bounds of our regular reporting schedule - fiscal year (July 1 - June 30) data published in a late-October report - we can strengthen our internal processes. How? Well, we can make sure that the data we collect for our CSR reports is baked into our everyday processes, rather than just compiled in a mad dash at the end of the fiscal year. That  matters because it means the goals we set and the metrics we put in place to track our progress have a better chance of becoming a regular part of our how we do business.

* We get to gauge - and engage - our audience. The way it works now, you hear from us once a year in late October. Sometimes we hear from you. But with this mid-year update, we are hoping to spark more of an ongoing dialogue. We are hoping that this update, coupled with the comments feature in our 2008 CSR report - something we'll carry forward into future reports - will spark more of a conversation with and among the people who care about Sun, our values, and how we do business.

I hope you'll check out this update and, most importantly, provide your feedback using the public comments feature at the bottom of the page. We are doing our best to hold ourselves accountable - this is an important component of that - but we also hope and expect our stakeholders will hold us accountable, too.   This is part of the "Share" component of Sun's "Innovate Act Share" strategy.